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Friday, July 24, 2015

I relearned an important lesson this week: With kids, sometimes you have to follow through on all those threatened
consequences. If you keep telling them you’re going to turn the car
around if they don't behave, and never actually turn the car around when they continue
to act like … well, children, they will
learn that the car isn’t going to get turned around no matter what they do.This may seem obvious. It's straight from the parenting 101 books
that I failed to read when I first started taking this experiential course in child-rearing a dozen years ago. But, I’ve been told lately that I’m not very good at this
whole follow through thing.

It’s not like I go around making threats to my kids. Sometimes
they act like insane little monsters, and the fear of sanctions is the only way I
can think of to get them to behave. So, threats happen. Take, for instance, a dinner out I had on a recent night with two
of our kids and their grandparents.

My wife is out of town with our two middle kids visiting her
sister, so I have responsibility for our 5-year-old boy and 12-your-old
daughter for the week. My parents, fresh back from a summer trip to Michigan
and Canada, called and asked if we wanted to have dinner at
a neat little seafood place.

Sure, I figured. Why not?

What I didn’t figure was that, after a week with his father’s
later bedtimes and lack of disciplinary follow-through, the 5-year-old boy would
be primed and ready for his worst restaurant behavior in recent memory.

Usually, with his middle sisters around, he just blends into
our family’s typical restaurant commotion and acts kid-like but within
acceptable parameters.

No such luck for our evening at the quant little seafood
place.He was standing on the booth
seat, under the table kicking people, blowing bubbles in his chocolate milk, dribbling water out of his mouth, then spitting
water out of his mouth, and screaming “What?”
at the top of his lungs like he was shocked to hear something as a way to humorously
add to the adult conversation. It wasn’t funny.I warned him several times that if he didn’t act better, we
would leave the restaurant.Only one problem with my threat: I was trapped in the
interior of the booth, and I was hungry. I guess that’s two problems. But, it’s notlike threatening to take him out of church when he acts up, which I
always follow through on because who wouldn’t rather be walking around outside
a church than inside it doing Catholic calisthenics on hard, wooden benches. Sit.
Stand. Kneel. Sit. Stand. Kneel.That’s
an easy follow through. But I really didn’t want to leave the restaurant and my
soon to be arriving crab-stuffed baked sole. (Apparently, my sole is more important to me
than my soul. But that’s not the point).So, despite repeated threats to go to the car that evening with
the misbehaving boy, we didn’t leave. His behavior never improved, though we
survived, and later that night he fell
asleep, finally granting me peace.It served as a perfect example of me not following through on
a threatened sanction, and I knew it.Thank
goodness my wife wasn’t there to witness the affair.Anyway, I resolved to do better next time.That next time arrived sooner than expected, when two days later I picked up the boy and his sister at
the separate day camps they attend in the mornings and decided to
take them to lunch.As always, the kids picked Panera. Those grilled cheese sandwiches
must have kid crack in them, I swear.

Consider this a warning to everyone, if you kick me in the shins you will not get a grilled cheese. ... I mean it.

We arrived just after high noon. Like every Panera in the
lower 48 at that time of day, there was a long line of people waiting to order overpriced,
small portions of fast casual goodness. So good, I usually leave still hungry, yet noticeably poorer.

Waiting in line, the boy kept trying to jump up and grab my neck.
I’m tall enough that he had no chance. But he kept at it.

“Stop that or we’re leaving.”

Then he started pushing his big sister.

“I’m warning you, boy,” I snarled.

Then he kicked me in the shins.

That was it. I grabbed him firmly by the arm – not too
firmly – and told him he’d been warned and now we were leaving.

Then we left. We actually left.

“I’ll listen! I’ll listen!” he wailed as we walked across
the parking lot to our car. He was certainly expecting us to turn around and go
back into Panera. But I kept right on
going; into the car and back to the house.

He cried the whole way.I made him a much cheaper version of a grilled cheese at home and, after
his fit died down a bit, he ate it.

Of course, leaving Panera for me was about as hard as leaving
church -- an easy threat to make good on. It was also easier to enforce with just two kids
in tow.If I’ve got four hungry kids and
a hungry wife, I’m not likely to drag all of them back to the car because the
boy is acting up. There’s too much potential for collateral suffering.Years ago, I remember leaving a grocery cart full of stuff and walking out with one wailing child -- who happens to now be twelve. But in the time since, I must've softened to the point where I developed a no-follow-through reputation.Not anymore.

I don’t know if this one bit of follow through will work to curb
future bad behavior. But it sure seems to have had an impact. He’s
mentioned the episode several times since. I think he's still shocked that we
actually left.

And, if I have to make the threat to leave again and he doesn’t
listen, you can bet I will make good on it. I just hope it’s at Panera and not
a quaint little seafood joint.

Friday, May 29, 2015

What possessed 15 dads, most of whom can’t sing a lick or
dance very well beyond the occasional “sprinkler” move, to get on a stage in
front a few hundred friends, family, and neighbors on a recent Spring night and
generally make fools of themselves? Did I mention that some were wearing
princess dresses?So, why exactly would grown men act this way?

The answer’s quite simple. But the impact is kind of profound.

I heard about this annual school event, called “Dad's
Night,” from one of the few friends I’d made over the years on my many trips to
open-houses and other parental events at the local elementary school.
He’d participated in Dad's Night the previous year and convinced me to attend
an informational meeting last Fall to learn more.

What I learned: Dad's Night is an annual skit show organized,
written, and performed by willing fathers whose kids go to our local public elementary
school.

A skit show? I thought at the time. As in, on stage?

For the record, I really don’t like to be the center
attention. It may sound weird coming from a guy who regularly puts his soul
down on paper – or on transmittable digital bytes – to be broadcast to the
world (at least conceivably).But it’s
true. I hate it.

Worst of all, I hate the thought of being on a stage in
front of people. It’s just not my thing. I’m much more a behind the scenes kind
of guy.

I'm the Elsa that looks more like Fiona

But, they say life begins where your comfort zone ends. I
read that recently. It may have been a poster with a kitten on a tree branch. Not
almost falling off the tree branch; that’s a “Never Give Up” poster.But just a kitten on a tree branch,
ostensibly branching out, I guess.Or
maybe it was a guy clinging to the side of a cliff with just a few carabiners
separating him from certain death. In any event, you get the point. “Life
begins where your comfort zone ends.”

For me, the border of my comfort zone lies somewhere between
the closed curtain and the open stage.

Still, as I thought about our local Dad's Night, I figured I
could at least help write some of the skits.

Besides, it’s tough for dads to meet other dads through their
kid’s school. Women are far better at bridging that divide and making friends
with the moms they see at pick-up and drop-off. For dads, even those like me
who do a fair share of picking up and dropping off, it can be very tough. Many of us just don’t see each other often
enough to gain a familiarity. Even when we do, it can be limited to head nods at
the annual curriculum night, or handshakes at the school carnival.

Befriending other school dads has always been near
impossible for me, and I imagine for many other dads. Because of it, I’ve never
really looked forward to school events, filled with awkward head nods and occasional
sports banter.

If nothing else, I figured this experiment would
give me a chance to actually meet and get to know some other dads.

So beginning last Fall, I started attending Dad's Night planning
and writing sessions every few weeks to talk about what exactly we were going
to do in the Spring show.

It proved a nice escape from the house – I work from home,
mostly, which is not as awesome as it sounds. And in the process I started to get to know
this strange and funny group of guys. (Not an insult. I like strange and funny,
and aspire to be both).

As winter crept by, the writing sessions became weekly
rehearsals. At one point, in my naiveté, I’d hoped only to write. But as a
rookie, I was quickly pulled fully into the production and even given lines –
at least in the skit I wrote. I ended up
even volunteering – along with a few other guys -- to wear an Elsa dress for a Halloween
skit and a few other scenes just to reduce my chances of getting more lines.

For a few months, each Sunday evening we gathered and laughed
and worked out the kinks in our show. Occasionally we grabbed a beer after our
meetings. Only occasionally.

As Spring grew closer, the nerves set in. Restful sleeps were
broken by images of a Middle School auditorium filled with parents and kids
that sounded like a field of crickets as my lines were delivered. I wasn’t alone in my fears, and found that several
other dads shared the phobia. Some others didn’t and seemed to thrive on the thought
of being up there. But most of us were scared.

As show night loomed closer, our weekly rehearsals became
daily ones.Anxiety grew. And I got thinking: what the heck are we
doing? Why are we subjecting ourselves to near certain humiliation and
potential doom?

Then, two days before the show, it became clear.It happened when my third grader, who battles
a level of shyness herself, came skipping home, proud as could be, that her dad
was actually going to be in Dad's Night. She was practically a celebrity in her class because
of it.

So, why would 15 grown men get up in front of their
community to potentially make fools of themselves? The same
reason we do most silly things: to make our kids laugh.

Show night came. And we danced. We sang. We dressed as Elsas.
All in front of a packed house (it was a school auditorium, but I wanted to say that). I got most of my lines right. And there were no cricket noises – except that one joke I wrote.But otherwise, it was a success.

To put it mildly, we rocked it. My kids haven’t stopped laughing and talking
about it yet, and it’s been a few weeks.

The bonus: Well, it’s as one of the other dads said, when
you go through something intense and stressful with a group, it can create a
unique bond.

By exiting my comfort zone and entertaining my kids, I also got to
know this great group of strange and funny guys. Now, I’m one of them.

And I’m looking forward to the next school gathering, complete
with a lot more head nods and sports banter.

If
your children's school doesn’t do something like Dads’ Night. It should.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

The boy is four years old.Four and a half, as he’s quick to correct. Yet we still struggle
mightily with how to discipline him. He literally thinks everything is a joke.
And I am using the word literally as it is supposed to be used.

We aren’t rookie parents. He’s our fourth. Of course, we’re
not the best at all aspects of parenting (ahem… bedtime). But we aren’t new to
our struggles. Figuring out how to get him to take us seriously – to take
anything seriously – is a great challenge.

“You lost dessert when you took your pants down at the table.”

I actually said that to him after dinner one day recently.In the middle of our meal, sometime after the
prayer and before his sisters scattered to the wind, the boy mooned the
table.As the girls all laughed,
including his mother in a seriously-suppressed sort of way, I told him that it
wasn’t funny to moon the table.

“Then why is everybody
laughing?”

A fair question. One
I didn’t have an immediate answer to. But it got me thinking, again, about the
great trouble we face with him. How do we get this little guy to realize that
life isn’t all one big joke?And just as
importantly, why exactly do I have to teach him that?

Our boy turns five this summer, something he’s been looking
forward to since he turned four.He’s a
great kid, he tells you he loves you, says thank you and sorry at appropriate times,
and offers hugs without request.He’s
smart, calling out the answers to his older sister’s math problems as she tries
to figure them on paper.He’s fast, too.
Super fast, as he likes to say. (He’s actually normal speed, but thinks he’s
like a rocket; don’t tell him otherwise).

But when it comes to discipline, he’s kind of like
Peter Pan probably was at four. He just doesn’t
get it. When I go to put him in timeout, it invariably becomes a game of chase,
with him laughing and squealing and letting out a guttural “AHHHHHH” like PeeWee Herman being chased by a
friendly bear.

This all matters because in a few short months this boy of
ours will go to kindergarten. Full day no less.

It’s time for him to grow up.Yet … I don’t want him to.

It makes me wonder where all the time has gone. And why the
heck it’s gone so fast.And how it all
seems like such a blur. I remember the first time we put a kid on the bus to go
to Kindergarten. My wife bawled. I didn’t. I stood stoically and watched. Then
I went to work. When the next two got on that bus when it was their turn, my
wife cried again. I didn’t.

When he gets on the bus, I think am going to. I know it. Not
because he’s the baby, or the boy (I don’t think like that), but because he’s the
last.

For the past 12 year we’ve had little ones who needed us
each day, to take care of and feed and clothe and wipe. For a good part of
that, we’ve worked, sending them to the sitter, or to pre-school, or to some
camp for half a day.

Always we hoped that we’d get to the point where one of us
could stay home and just be the parent. It never happened.And soon, they won’t need us to. As my wife
muttered after she filled out the kindergarten paperwork for the boy, it’s
gone.

People told us to cherish it, like we tell other parents to.
But did we? Did we? Heck, I can barely remember all of it.

I know there’s a lot more parenting left to do, and a lot
more time with our little people before they go off to college. But if it’s
anything like the last 12 years, it’s going to fly by and become a blur.

And that’s why it’s so hard to teach this boy that his
antics aren’t funny. Because they are. And I want them always to be.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

I bounded not once but twice on the trampoline, hoping to
get the height and momentum needed to flip my body forward on the next jump
over the edge and into the pit of foam cubes.

That’s just what a random five-year-old kid did on the turn
before mine. And it looked easy enough.

Besides, I’ve been known to do forward flips off the diving
board with regularity, if not with grace. How different could it be?

Once the kid before me cleared the landing area, and
the teenager with the whistle signaled it was my turn to go, and my
daughter watching gave me a supportive “whoop,” that’s what I set out to
do – a forward flip. Yes. It was decided.

Yet somewhere between my second bound on the trampoline and
the final launching one, all the courage I had mustered sprung right out of me. Rather than a final bound and a flip, my frightened
legs absorbed the momentum like old shocks, and I stuttered cautiously to the
edge and lamely fell face first toward the waiting foam.

I imagine there’s a moment growing up when a kid realizes
their parents aren’t super heroes; when it dawns on them that the person they’ve
held in special regard all these years is just normal, and not even terribly cool.

If it hadn’t happened already, that moment certainly occurred
for my eldest daughter as my uncoordinated, hulking mass of trepidation gingerly leapt over the edge of the precipice and landed awkwardly in the pile of foam cubes.

No height to my vault. No gracefulness. No
flip.

Of course, she would tell you the moment she realized my failings had happened much sooner.
And many times over.

Pink-panted blur in the middle is our 7 year old.
The boy is the one literally bouncing off the wall.

Our family found ourselves at the trampoline park during the kids’
recent February break – a traditional week off in the middle of winter when most
upstate New Yorkers high-tail it for Florida. We, as usual, did not.Instead, we bounced.

Luckily for us we live in a place where people would go insane if someone didn't design and build lots of indoor entertainment facilities -- like the indoor ropes course at Canyon Climb, or the 26,000 square foot kids' play arena at Billy Bees, or the field o' trampoline at Sky Zone.

The trampoline park, built inside a cavernous
rectangular space that used to be a Hechinger’s, is divided into sections: a
general bouncing area with many small squares for individual jumping; three “dodge
ball courts” for specific age groups and private parties; a basketballdunking section with two hoops; and then the infamous
foam pits. You pay per person for passes to the whole park in 30 minute increments,
and are required to wear specific trampoline “SkySocks” with sticky bottoms – which
you can buy for two bucks.

There are lots of safety rules, like only one person per
trampoline square and no double flips (no worries there). All bouncers are divided by age, so that
little kids are only jumping around other small people, which makes sense but can
create some logistical challenges for bigger families.

It can also get crowded quick, so it’s a good idea to call
ahead on busy weekends and over the holiday break.

For the most part, the kids liked bouncing around the park
(and that they got to keep the brightly-colored orange socks we had to buy to
enter). Not exactly “Disney ears,” but certainly a useful addition to the sock
drawer. Hey, you never know when you're gonna need trampoline socks that match absolutely nothing you own.

It was fun for all. Though next time we’re bringing a friend for our oldest so
she has someone her size to bounce with – or they can just pout and roll their eyes
in unison.

No matter what we do, I’m going to avoid the foam pit of disappointment.

Monday, February 9, 2015

To
put it mildly: she’s a personality. As my sister describes her, she’s what you
might imagine Tina Fey was like as a child. Sadie's hilarious, and so in her own
world. She can draw better than any kid I’ve ever met, and does a mean robot dance.

Me: "I want to take a picture for your birthday."
Sadie: "How about one with me drinking apple juice."
Me: "Sure?"

Celebrating
her birthday also reminds me of what I was doing when she was born. Seven years
ago I was working on the toughest campaign I’ve ever been a part of, a special
election in February in Upstate New York.

But
it was most memorable to me for one thing that happened – and it involved our
then three-day-old little girl.

I
wrote about it a few years back, as I tend to do. The story has lived in a file
on my computer since. Here it is:

It was February 12, 2008. I was in the basement, lost in
my work world, editing a press release on yet another subject, when I heard a
scream.

“She’s not breathing!”

The words were being yelled by
my mother-in-law. She was frantic.

“The baby’s not breathing!”

When the scream registered, I
moved without thinking. I bound up the basement steps and burst into the living
room, my mother-in-law was holding three-day-old Sadie in front of her. The baby’s face
was deep red, and she looked like she was on her way to blue.

Frantically, “She’s not breathing.”

She handed her to me.

“Was she drinking, spiting up,
anything?”

I took the baby, and quickly swept
my finger through her mouth to remove any possible obstruction. Nothing.

“Call 911,” I barked to my
wife.

Then I flipped her quickly,
but gently, onto my forearm with her face down in my upturned palm, her legs up
my arm. She was so tiny. I patted her back to see if anything was lodged. Two
pats, and nothing was there.

I turned her back over. She
was still dark red. “C’mon, breathe.”

I held her up right, close to
my shoulder, looking into her face. “Please breathe! Please!” I pleaded.

I caressed her back, and
begged and begged her to take a breath. I didn’t know what else to do.

Time was ticking, and I knew
it. I thought, this is what it’s like to hold a child that is dying. No, she
can’t be.

“Breathe, my Sadie. Please.”

Then I felt it, and saw it in
her face. She took in one tiny breath. It was a struggle. Then she took in
another.

“She took a breath,” I
announced in relative relief. She was still struggling.

Her color was returning to
normal, but breaths were hard to come by. I walked in circles in the living
room, past the windows, as her labored breaths continued.

A police officer arrived
first, and came through the door as I paced in tight circles, rubbing the
baby’s back.

When the ambulance pulled up
in front of the house, the baby’s breathing was almost normal again but not
quite. The breaths weren’t deep or regular. It was like she forgot how.

The paramedics came through
the door, a large man and a small woman, dressed in blue. They took her from
me, and began asking what happened. My mother-in-law and wife described the
scene, as I continued to pace the same circles.

I looked into the next room and
saw our two other daughters, age two and five (at the time), huddled under the
dining room table, hugging each other in fear.

I coaxed them out from under
the table.

“Is everything going to be okay,
daddy?” the oldest one asked, looking shaken, scared and lost.

I didn’t know the answer.

“I hope so, dear. I hope so.”

The paramedics placed a tiny
oxygen mask on our baby and asked my wife and I to go with them.

They radioed in as we walked
behind them to the awaiting ambulance. “Infant child in respiratory
distress.”

We climbed into the ambulance,
numb from the last several minutes. Sadie was too small for the stretcher, instead
the women paramedic held her, keeping the oxygen mask in place and watching her
breathe closely. My wife was shaking, and looked white as ghost. I’m sure I
looked the same. We’d only left the hospital the day before. And now, we were
returning the same route in the back of an ambulance.

******

The emergency room bed looked
gigantic with a three-day-old baby in the middle of it.

Cords as thick as her fingers
ran away from her feet and her hands to machines and screens, letting out
piercing beeps and drawing jagged lines. A green line, a blue line and white
line all crossed the screen together, jumping and bouncing to separate but in
sync rhythms.

Everything looked normal, said
the doctor. She was tall and attractive, with long curly red hair and serious,
attentive eyes. Other doctors and nurses came and went, seemingly at her
direction. Running tests and awaiting orders.

The room was small, and
sterile, with the beep every second or two drowning out the noise from the busy
emergency room hall outside, and the chatter from the nurses’ station within a
few feet. I guess they like to keep newborns in the ER close to the nurses. Our
older daughter would’ve called it a money spot. But it didn’t feel like money.

My wife and I sat and watched
our baby, watched the screens, and listened to the sounds of normalcy. The
beeps and the blips were steady and reassuring, but we were consumed with
wonder and worry about what had happened to take our baby’s breath away. We
hugged, and cried, and tried to absorb it all.

The doctor asked repeatedly
how long it lasted. I counted out in my head all the actions I could remember. Mother-in-law
noticing. 10 seconds, maybe. Scream registering, 6 seconds. Climbing the steps,
4 seconds. Taking baby, 2 seconds. Sweeping the mouth, 2 seconds. Back
compressions, 3 seconds. Holding her upright and begging her to breathe, 18-20
seconds. It was for less than a minute, we guessed, but at least 45 seconds. Maybe more.

She asked what shade of red
Sadie had turned. She wanted to know if it was blue at all. I knew what she was
getting at. It was dark red, not blue. Maybe a little blue around the lips. But
the rest of her face was dark red, not blue. That was good.

She called it an Apparent Life
Threatening Event – ALTE – stressing that was a description, not a diagnosis. The
cause was unclear, and could be a number of rather mundane and ordinary things.

As time passed and the beeps
stayed steady, the activity in our little emergency room ebbed. Nurses came
less often, and the doctors focused on other patients. Was it nothing? A
one-time incident? Were they going to give us a clean bill of health and send
us home with a baby, who not that long ago, forgot how to breathe? How were we
supposed to just leave? Go home. Live normal.

Then in a moment, it changed
again. One beep became sustained, the lines on the screen dipped, her heart
rate dropped, the baby went limp on the bed. The redhead doctor and two nurses
were at her side before I could even stand up from my chair. She turned red. Then
took a small breath. And then another. The doctor hovered over her closely, as
she slowly remembered how to breathe again.

ALTE number two.

The doctor turned to us, even
more serious than before.

“We’re going to admit her.”

She was uncertain what had happened, just then and before. There were a series of potential causes, some very manageable. They would need to do tests.

“Keep us here as long as it
takes,” I replied.

******

The battery of test lasted four
days. We stayed at the hospital on the 5th floor – three floors down
from maternity. Once a baby’s out in the world, they can’t come back to
maternity, even if she’s three days old.

My wife slept in the room, on a fold
out chair next to Sadie’s industrial looking crib, with appropriately sized
wires and screens for an infant under constant medical care. The nurses were
there at every moment, all day and throughout the night. But only one parent
was allowed to sleep in the room. So I slept in the waiting room on the same
floor in another fold out chair. I had my own television, a few coffee tables
and lots of magazines to read.

After the doctors witnessed the
episode in the emergency room they gave it a more descriptive name than just an
Apparent Life Threatening Event: they called it Infant Apnea. Of course, this
too was descriptive and not a diagnosis telling us the cause. Apnea just means
a cessation in breathing. In adults it can be normal during sleep. In infants,
it is more of a threat and there is usually a cause. There are many potential
causes, actually. Some manageable, as they said, and some more challenging.

Every few hours there seemed
to be a new potential diagnosis. And each time I was convinced this was it,
until the tests proved otherwise. Epilepsy was thought possible. It could be seizures.
I remembered times during pregnancy when my wife would say it felt like the
baby was moving rapidly. That must be it, I thought. Then the doctors in a
small room in the basement of the hospital attached little tweezers and suction
cups electrodes to her head and tracked her brain waves for almost an hour. Normal.
No residual trace of seizure activity. They did a CAT scan to rule out brain
tumors. They ran blood work. They did a spinal tap.

I’d had a spinal tap once. It
was painful. This time the patient was my tiny newborn, and I had to hold her
still while the doctors probed repeatedly looking for that small pocket of
fluid at the base of the spine. It took a few times as I held her firm and
still and my wife wept.

Each time the doctors would
analyze the results and rule out a cause. Each day new possible causes would be
presented, and ruled out. And each night, I would go home to get us a change of
clothes, tuck our other daughters into bed, and return to my waiting room on
the 5th floor for another night.

Increasingly the doctors
implied that we might never know. That after all this, we would have to go home
with our child and keep her hooked up to an apnea monitor, in case it happened
again. I couldn’t stand the thought. We’d be nervous forever. We had to know
what happened.

Late on the third day of
tests, through the process of elimination, a new diagnosis was presented.

A new doctor sat us down and
told us it could have been the unlikely result of a rather common problem. Many
premature babies and a few full-term ones are born before the muscle atop their
stomach is fully formed. This is the muscle that closes to prevent food and
acid from flowing into the esophagus. This common condition is known as infant
GERD, or gastro-intestinal reflux disease.

Reflux? Really? My baby has
reflux. That’s it?

The doctor continued. This
condition usually presents itself in the form of frequent spit up, discomfort
after eating, even what is traditionally called colic. Occasionally the reflux
can be so intense that it stimulates the vagus nerve, which runs along the outside
of the esophagus. When the vagus nerve becomes stimulated, it can cause a
cessation in breathing as well as a drop in the heart rate. It was manageable
and would go away with age.

The day’s diagnosis had
arrived, and it was one we could live with. The doctor then said there was a
test to make certain of the diagnosis. It was up to us if we wanted to do it.

“Do the test.”

It would require them to
insert a tube up her nose and down the esophagus to measure PH above the
stomach.

“Do the test.”

And the baby would have to
stay in the hospital for another night.

“Just do the test.”

On the final night in the
Hospital, they did the PH test. During my stop at home to get clothes, I searched
the internet to learn about GERD and the vagus nerve. I ought to know better than to
do that. But I wanted to know. It was manageable, but GERD and the vagus nerve
were also cited for a possible correlation with SIDS – Sudden Infant Death
Syndrome.

Crap. I guess we weren’t going
to be sleeping all too soundly for a while.

When the test results came
back, she had passed. Or failed, depending on what result was desired. Her
stomach acid was off the charts. She had an acute case of GERD, and that was
causing her to stop breathing.

We were going to go home. She
would need medication. She would have to be hooked up to the apnea monitor for
the next few months. But we were going home. And we knew what had happened.

When we got home that evening,
my wife and I took turns holding Sadie and just looking at her. The other girls
wanted to hold her too. We let them.

We sat with our children on
our couch, in the living room of our home, and just tried to enjoy the fact
they were all there with us.

The campaign I was working on at the time ended two weeks later. For the
next few months, we barely slept as her apnea monitor and our nerves kept us up
most nights. But, after a year of taking medicine, Sadie was still fine.

Each year on her birthday, we celebrate a little extra that she’s with us -- in all her wackiness.

Friday, January 30, 2015

Sometimes, you plan to make a nice meal and it ends up a big
pile of mush.I wish that was an analogy, or some sort of lame metaphor.But it’s actually a true story.This past week I was wandering through the grocery store
when I found a whole chicken for a pretty good price. I often buy whole chickens
and give them my version of Thomas Keller’s roast chicken and vegetables.
It’s a simple, sophisticated meal that both
kids and parents enjoy.Yet, for some reason, when I spied this particular chicken,
I had a different idea entirely.I
decided this chicken wanted to be … no, needed to be … the star in another
dish: Chicken Pot Pie.When I say Chicken Pot Pie, I’m not talking about a flaky
little pie with chicken in it, a la Stouffers
or Chicken
Run. I’m talking about Pennsylvania
Dutch Chicken Pot Pie.
﻿

It’s an amazing stew with a savory broth, chunks of chicken
and vegetables, and the trademark fluffy, yet firm noodles that remind every
descendent of a Pennsylvania Dutch cook of cozy Sunday evenings surrounded family,
sitting by a warm fire, and covered with blankets.Those noodles. Oh, those noodles.When I go on an extended low-carb kick, I dream of those noodles.
Those fluffy clouds in your mouth, that happen to taste like chicken. ... Sorry. Too much? For those who don’t know, my mom is part Pennsylvania Dutch
and makes a legendary Chicken Pot Pie. I’ve
always thought that if I opened a food truck – which I have no immediate plans
to do – I’d just sell her pot pie, and I’m sure the food network would
broadcast live from our little culinary trailer.There’s only one problem with the food truck idea and with
my more immediate plans for this one well-priced whole chicken I brought home
from the store on a recent Wednesday: I don’t know how to make Chicken Pot Pie.Some of my other siblings have had the good sense to invite
mom over specifically for a pot pie tutorial. Apparently, I lack good sense.My wife and I have my parents over often. Yet despite
my self-proclaimed abilities in the kitchen (I could have been a chef if things
had worked out differently; or a pro running back, but that’s a different story),
I have never learned the fine art of chicken pot pie making.I know how to make a fair chicken noodle soup, of course,
which is a start. And when I called my mom that night – first to invite her over, then,
upon being refused, just to ask how to make the dish – she told me the a good
broth was the key.I can do a broth, I said to myself. So I decided, “Damn the
torpedoes, full steam ahead … on my pot pie meal plan” -- a quote that surely made
the whole endeavor sound more important than it was. But heck, both the meal
plan and this story left "good sense" in the dust two paragraphs ago.Luckily, my sister, who lives nearby and has had the pot pie
tutorial, called that same evening to inquire about dinner. Her husband was planning to work late, so her and her kid were looking for some company. The invite was extended.She brought more potatoes, a pastry roller, and critical
knowledge.We were all set. So we thought.Unfortunately, we made a few miscalculations. The first misstep
being the amount of time it takes to make pot pie. There’s a reason Dutchie moms
(and progressive Dutchie dads) make pot pie on Sundays. Because the darn thing takes
a long time to make.Not to cook, but to
make.No self-respecting Pennsylvania
Dutch chef would make pot pie on a school night. I’d started the broth earlier, so that was fine. But the
noodles – those damn noodles. It took quite a while to get the noodle dough just
right, with the rolling and the cutting and the fussing and the flouring. Out next miscalculation also had to do with time: that being
how long to cook the darn things. Not
the broth or the vegetables, but the noodles – again with the noodles.Once we got the noodle dough right (we thought), we added them
one-by-one to the boiling broth, which was brimming deliciously with veggies,
chicken and potatoes.“Let it go 20 minutes,” we were told over the phone by our remote
Pennsylvania Dutch consultant, “or until the potatoes are done.” The potatoes were added right before the
noodles, and were therefore a safe barometer of noodle doneness. In theory, anyway.The only question we had was, do the noodles boil for 20 minutes or just simmer. Cooking potatoes in that time requires a boil,
we thought.But we worried the delicate
noodles couldn’t withstand the heat for that long.We chose a full boil.We should have called and asked yet another question. Damn, we should have asked!Whenever you look back on something that ends up all wrong, there is usually one
fatal error.There can be lots of
smaller errors, and pre-errors.But
there’s one fatal error. That was ours. We boiled the hell out of those noodles.
In the end our little family, and my sister and her
child, gathered around the table to eat my first attempt -- solo or otherwise –
at the family favorite: the well-revered, the often-exalted, the rarely-imitated Chicken
Pot Pie of the Pennsylvania Dutch variety.What I served them was a pile of mush.I guess it's time for that tutorial. Mom?Like the article? Know others who may enjoy reading it? Please share it using the buttons below or to the left. Thank you.

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About Me

I'm a writer, a husband and a father of four. I once worked in news in Washington, D.C.; served as a speechwriter for a spell; and was chief of staff to a New York state senator. Now I consult, teach and help raise our kids. This is where I write all about it.